Lydia Ko (left), Caitlin Clark, Amelia Kerr and Michaela Brake. Photo / NZME
Suzanne McFadden for LockerRoom
The dominance of New Zealand’s female athletes at the Paris Olympics, alongside the White Ferns’ unexpected success at last year’s T20 World Cup, has helped lift coverage of women’s sport in New Zealand to a level that sports leaders hope will be the new norm.
The latest Sports Media and Gender Study, which tracked gender balance and visibility in sports news across 2024, shows 27% of all stories were dedicated to women’s sport.
That’s up one point from 2023, when Aotearoa hosted the Fifa Women’s World Cup, but more importantly, it’s just shy of the all-time high of 28% reached during the landmark year of 2022, when both the Women’s Cricket and Rugby World Cups were played here.
That makes the latest 27% figure all the more notable, with the key events for Kiwi athletes last year – the Olympics, Paralympics and cricket World Cups – all held offshore.
It’s a significant jump from the 15% recorded for women when the study began five years ago. So is this the new normal? Will coverage of women’s sport continue to hover in the mid-20s?
Sport New Zealand’s chief executive, Raelene Castle, would like to think so. “I think this will be the new baseline,” she says. “There’s awareness, profile and a shift in thinking around female sport now, and the great results keep coming for our women.
“We’d expect everyone to report on them and celebrate them, because that drives positivity for the country. And I hope it continues to grow from here. I’d still like to see it up at 30 or 35%.”
Dame Lydia Ko was well ahead of the rest of the field of female athletes mentioned in sports coverage throughout 2024. The golfer’s name appeared twice as often as in 2023 – thanks to her Olympic gold medal, British Open victory and induction into the LPGA Hall of Fame. Lulu Sun, the tennis world’s Newcomer of the Year, was second, ahead of Dame Lisa Carrington, despite Carrington’s haul of three Olympic golds.
But the news wasn’t all positive. While gender balance – the share of coverage devoted to women’s sport – continues to slowly rise, the visibility of females keeps sliding.
The report found the proportion of female athletes, coaches, officials and fans featured in media coverage in 2024 had declined (to 23%), while the representation of men increased.
The drop in visibility was driven by three key trends:
The visibility gap could be closed, Castle says, simply by making broadcast coverage of women’s sport more regular and sustained.
“The single-biggest change for women’s sport will be week-in, week-out content in our lounge rooms, with superstars – like Caitlin Clark in the WNBA – who drive the curiosity and interest,” she says. “It’s the single thing that will ultimately move the dial in the media landscape.
“And regular coverage for our women is growing – the Warriors Women in the NRLW, Super Rugby Aupiki, the Phoenix Women in the A League, the White Ferns playing in Australia’s Big Bash League. They live in our lounge rooms every week and that’s what drives the media to report on it, because you’re involved in consistent competition over a season, as opposed to a short, two-week event.”
Cricket’s 6% rise in gender balance – driven by the White Ferns’ T20 Cup win in October – is now reflected in higher viewership for women’s cricket and growing participation at grassroots level.
Jess Davidson, head of female engagement at NZ Cricket, says the White Ferns’ 2024-25 international summer spurred a 50% increase in the T20 viewing audience.
“They won the World Cup, and suddenly there’s an elevated platform and people want to know how the White Ferns are going,” she says.
“The elevated coverage builds familiarity – particularly for young women and girls – helping them relate to the White Ferns, and they imagine themselves in that position one day. It boosts visibility and reinforces that the sport belongs to them just as much as it does to boys and men.
“By the end of the 2024-25 season, we’d seen a 15% increase in the total number of women and girls playing across all formats – which is awesome. And the White Ferns are off to India for the Women’s Cricket World Cup in September, so it’s all go.”
It wasn’t just international cricket that garnered more attention – there was more reporting on domestic teams like the Auckland Hearts and Wellington Blaze.
“For me, that’s where the impact lies, with our local competitions getting the coverage they deserve,” says Davidson, who sees the 27% gender balance statistic as a benchmark to build from.
During the Paris Olympics, female athletes received 54% of the coverage, up three points from the Tokyo Games in 2021.
That’s fitting, given women dominated New Zealand’s success in Paris, claiming 13 of the 20 medals, and eight of the 10 golds – a trend that’s held since Rio 2016.
Across all sports media during the Olympics period – when the All Blacks lost to Argentina and the Black Caps missed the playoffs at the men’s T20 World Cup – women’s sports coverage reached 45%.
Chief executive of the NZ Olympic Committee (NZOC), Nicki Nicol, says the findings are encouraging – particularly as the organisation has been advocating for fair and inclusive media portrayal for the past decade.
“We’re big proponents of ‘if you can see it, you can be it’, so how do we share compelling female stories with the media? In our video and news releases, photos and press conference opportunities, we always make sure it’s gender-balanced,” she says. “When it’s performance-based, then obviously the cream rises to the top.”
Diving into their own research during last year’s Olympics, the NZOC analysed individual media coverage and found seven of the top 10 most-covered athletes were women. Leading the pack was flagbearer Dame Lisa Carrington, followed closely by cyclist Ellesse Andrews, who collected two golds and a silver.
“In our social media content, 60% of our coverage was on female athletes, and eight of the 10 most engaged social posts featured female athletes. And eight of the 10 gold medals at Paris were won by women. So, what we’re seeing is the affinity to connect,” Nicol says.
The importance of building personalities and telling the back stories of sportswomen is obvious.
“Some of our female athletes are superstars and that makes a huge difference because they carry the conversation, which helps with the coverage,” Castle says.
“We’re getting to know more about Dame Lisa Carrington, and Black Ferns like Ruby Tui, Jorja Miller and Ruahei Demant, who’s a lawyer away from the rugby field. Knowing the personalities behind the players makes people turn on the TV to watch their favourite players.”
But there’s pressure in sports newsrooms that have been decimated by restructuring in recent years to report anything outside team announcements and match reports. That’s where sports organisations have stepped up their own social media coverage – to appeal to Gen Z and Gen Alpha – or are producing content to share with media, trying to get cut-through.
Stories produced by female reporters in sports newsrooms continues to fall – down to 12% – while female presenters on our screens dropped below half (from 54% to 43%).
In other findings from the Sport NZ report, netball returned to the top of the list as the most covered female sport (on 15%), and football took the biggest dive – from 29% when the World Cup was played here in 2023, to 9% a year later.
Despite the first-ever Women’s America’s Cup raced in 2024, and having females figure prominently in SailGP crews, the gender balance in reporting sailing rose only slightly (from 14.4% to 16.9%).
Castle is “absolutely optimistic” that women’s sport will continue to make progress. She witnessed it at the Laurie O’Reilly Cup clash between the Black Ferns and the Wallaroos in Wellington last weekend, part of a double-header with the All Blacks v France test straight afterwards.
“There would have been 20,000 people in the stadium by halftime in the Black Ferns’ test,” she says. “That’s huge – usually you’d see around 3000 with everyone flying in the gates in the final minutes for the All Blacks’ test.”
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.